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Policy failures in environment and development have been blamed on frag mented and eclectic policies and strategies. The 1992 United Nations Con ference on Environment and Development, the 'Earth Summit' in Rio de Janeiro, called therefore for an integrated approach in planning and policy making to achieve long-term sustainable growth and development. The Con ference also recognized in its action plan, the Agenda 21, that integrated poli cies need to be supported by integrated information, notably requiring the implementation of integrated environmental and economic accounting by its member States. During the preparations for the Rio Summit, scientists and practitioners of national accounting met in a Special Conference on Environmental Account ing, organized by the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth (IARIW) in Baden, Austria. Their aim was to explore the need for and methodologies of adjusting national accounts for environmental reasons. National accountants had faced mounting criticism that conventional accounting neglected new scarcities in natural capital, as well as the social cost of environmental degradation. The result of their deliberations was a draft manual, later issued by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) as a handbook of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting.
List of contents
1. Overview.- 2. Implementation of environmental accounting: towards an operational manual.- 3. Japan: the System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA) - trial estimates and remaining issues.- 4. Republic of Korea: SEEA pilot compilation.- 5. Philippines: Adaptation of the United Nations system of environmental accounting.- 6. Philippines: Environmental accounting as instrument of policy.- 7. USA: Integrated economic and environmental accounting: lessons from the IEESA.- 8. USA: Environmental protection activities and their consequences.- 9. Netherlands: What's in a NAMEA? Recent results.- 10. Measuring Canada's natural wealth: why we need both physical and monetary accounts.- 11. Building physical accounts for Namibia: depletion of water, minerals, and fish stocks, and loss of biodiversity.- 12. Material and energy flow analysis in Germany: accounting framework, information system, applications.- 13. Material flow accounts indicating environmental pressure from economic sectors.- 14. Land use accounting - pressure indicators for economic activities.- 15 Linking land cover, intensity of use and botanical diversity in an accounting framework in the UK.- 16. The value of nature - valuation and evaluation in environmental accounting.- 17. Environmental protection expenditure and its representation in national accounts.- 18. Valuing environment in developing countries: a challenge.- 19. Greening the national accounts: valuation issues and policy uses.- 20. Modelling and accounting work in national and environmental accounts.- 21. Alternative resource and environmental accounting approaches and their contribution to policy.- 22. Multisectoral policy modelling for environmental analysis.- 23. Identifying research priority.- References.- Notes oncontributors.
